Euro Crisis Part 2

17 May 2012 - Public Relations

Against a backdrop of continued economic misery, rising unemployment and some extremely unnerving goings on in Greece and France in the past week, William Hague managed to single handedly infuriate the vast majority of business owners by telling them to stop complaining about the economy and work harder.

Brilliant. We hadn’t thought of this ourselves, so thanks for pointing it out.

Yet another media relations disaster for the coalition which currently seems to be reeling from one PR mess to another on a daily basis. The response from the business community has, not surprisingly, been one of fury, with David Cameron now holding talks with business leaders at Number 10 in a bid to “address the potentially damaging divide between the private sector and Government.”

Meanwhile, in other news, Rebekah Brooks has been charged with conspiracy to prevent the course of justice, once again dragging David Cameron into the spotlight given his relationship with Brooks and of course his former communications advisor Andy Coulson – see our previous blog “when a spokesperson needs a spokesperson”.

All we need now is for Greece to leave the Euro and the mess will be complete for this week. But hey, let’s not make a Drachma out of a crisis.

Euro Crisis Part 1

17 May 2012 - Public Relations

With just over a month to go until Euro 2012 kicks off, you can’t help but wonder whether the FA has scored a spectacular public relations own goal in appointing Roy Hodgson as England manager.

With many England fans eagerly anticipating the forthcoming tournament, the calls from the general public to make Harry Redknapp the England boss and to lead the charge into the Euro’s are still ringing in many ears. The FA must have its own reasons for appointing Hodgson but the backlash should England crash out of the tournament early might be painful to watch.

Essentially, England either has to win the whole thing or at the very least reach the quarter finals and do us proud, for it to be seen as anything but a failure. Typically, fans and the nation will initially blame the players, then the manager and then in turn, and ultimately, the FA for appointing the manager in the first place.

From a public relations perspective, had the FA chosen Redknapp they couldn’t lose. If England went on to do well or even win the tournament, the FA would have been seen to have made the right appointment and they, and Redknapp, would be heroes. If the squad didn’t do so well with Redknapp in charge, they could have shrugged their collective shoulders and said: “well, you wanted him” and the media would have very little to go on given that most of them backed him or at least fuelled the speculation that Redknapp would take charge.

Like the rest of the country, we’ll be cheering the team on in June, let’s hope that they do well and the FA don’t spend the rest of July with tin hats on, in the trenches, under a media barrage of “told you so”.

HROC | PR | That must be a PR stunt… right?

10 May 2012 - Hroc, Public Relations

Working in PR, it’s a phrase we hear on a regular basis. Spotting the sometimes blatant attempts to capitalise on publicity from a stunt is one of our favourite pastimes. Okay, so it’s not really, but we do love a good old PR stunt!

And we’re not talking about Z-list-celebs-skirt-blows-up-in-a-gust-of-wind-Marilyn-stylee stunt at the Soap Awards. We’re talking about the strategic campaigns that have been precisely planned and executed by the talented PR staff working behind the scenes.

Our favourites of the year so far have been the Tropicana sun installation in Trafalgar Square, which banished the winter blues briefly for Londoners up early enough to enjoy it in all its glory.

Then there’s the Castlemaine XXXX island that has been leased by the Australian brewery, who are now asking members of the public to decide how the island should be developed (the research trip alone would have been worth the potential ridicule from colleagues for suggesting such an outlandish idea).

The Anton Berg Generous Store also caught our eye (and made us a little peckish as an office of chocolate lovers) as the world’s first chocolate store where you could only pay with a promise of a good deed rather than money. Backed up by signing into Facebook and contacting the person you promise to do the good deed for, the video has so far racked up an impressive 70,000 plus hits on YouTube.

And we can’t talk about great stunts without mentioning HROC’s recent choice as campaign of the week, featuring a seemingly innocuous button placed in a sleepy town in Belgium.

Celebrating the launch of a new TV channel TNT designed to bring some ‘drama’ to local television, when the ‘push this button for drama’ button is pushed all hell breaks loose with a series of comedy antics unfolding too numerous to mention, catching the unaware pusher completely off guard. So far the video has amassed an immense 30,000,000 plus views showing what a little creative thinking can accomplish.

Seemingly, the age of the PR stunt appears to not only be alive and well, but is also a successful means of getting across your message to a wider audience in a memorable way. You only have to search #prstunt on Twitter to find more great examples.

Stunt activity is a fun and fast way of gaining awareness, editorial coverage and buzz about a product or brand. With the use of social media; news of stunt activity can spread like wildfire, meaning talkability can sky rocket while ROI can be easily monitored qualitively e.g. how may people are engaging with it, who is tweeting/Facebooking about it? Hopefully, if the campaign has been well planned, it will reach its target audience and more.

HROC’s most recent stunt took place at the Ideal Home Show for our client Geberit AquaClean – a state of the art WC that cleans you with water and includes a model that dries you also. The product range was launched at the show last year and, with no ‘new’ models to speak of, our brief was to re-ignite interest in the product and generate activity to create a buzz and additional footfall/interest in the stand.

Thus, the ‘Jubiloo’ was born (get it? Jubilee and loo… I’m wasted in PR). The theme explored the notion of the Geberit Aquaclean as a throne befitting Her Majesty herself. With that in mind, we drafted in the UK’s most qualified Queen impersonator to meet her loyal subjects, which tied in perfectly given that the HRH Prince of Wales officially opened the show (coincidence… I think not!). Throughout the event the Queen and the Jubiloo caused quite a stir with more than a few having to double-take.

Of course, stunts don’t always go according to plan and there are some horrible examples of stunts going wrong (we’re too kind to name any of them). Whilst the right stunt can make a brand, a wrong stunt can easily break a brand too, so it’s important that you have the right team behind the idea to plan it as precisely as possible.

But in the end, remember: ‘there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about’ (Oscar Wilde).

Don’t get bogged down in blog town!

27 April 2012 - Public Relations

With reports recently surfacing that more companies are turning their backs on blogs, in favour of Facebook and Twitter for their ability to quickly relay messages to core markets and worldwide audiences – HROC PR looks at the likely reasons companies are dropping blogs, why it’s a bad idea and how not to get bogged down in blog town!

Why are companies giving blogs the cold shoulder?

Reports have indicated that one of the main causes for companies not wanting to maintain a regular blog is the perception (misguided as it is) that blogging is a lengthy process, involving finding an appropriate subject, researching it extensively and then writing a blog about it. Most companies don’t want to give up that much of an employee’s time for something they have little ability to quantify.

With the emergence of Twitter so too came micro blogging – the ability to blog without the fuss of writing a full post. This is great in theory and can be used as a quick hit way to target key demographics without taking too much time. So it’s understandable that companies are favouring Twitter and other social media channels over blogs, right? Er, wrong!

Twitter and Facebook may be the premier forms of engaging through social media, but the problem with these platforms is distinguishing a single voice or opinion against a sea of noise – and sometimes with the extra challenge of doing so with a limited number of characters.

By having a blog to fall back on, you have three ways of having your opinion heard (throw YouTube into the mix and you have four), which not only results in establishing yourself within the framework of a conversation but also drives traffic to your site.

But blogging does not have to be long winded – in fact, the average blog reader only stays on page for an average 96 seconds, so it’s better that your blog is concise and shows a succinct argument that in some way asserts a positive opinion of your company to the reader.

Why Blog?

Where blogs differ from other social media channels is that they have the unique advantage of positioning a company at the forefront of an issue within their field.

The blogs you will find on our website are about creative, digital, PR and advertising issues because it’s what we know and do day in day out. By having an engaging opinion on something you stand out from the crowd and blogs allow you to convey this better, and in more detail, than some other channels.

Twitter and Facebook are great for quick messages but should always link back to a blog, website or some other anchor, and be used as a secondary method of spreading news as opposed to the primary.

Don’t get me wrong, blogs are not easy to maintain. We do it for a number of our clients and it can be hard work, but one of the primary reasons that companies cease blogging is because they underestimate the time blogs do take and set unrealistic blogging calendars, whilst overthinking their posts.

A blog post once or twice a month is more than enough to get you noticed by search engines along with your key audience and the sooner you realise you are not writing ‘War and Peace’ the better your ability to blog will be.

Blogging helps SEO

It’s true!

The more a company can update their blogs, the more search engines will take note of the constantly updated content and rank you higher in searches.

By effectively using Twitter and Facebook to promote blogs you can help build the mentions of your company on search engines but this alone is not enough.

Once the post is written and uploaded you need to spend some time developing relations with the blogging community by commenting on other articles that relate to your subject matter. This is in the hope that those you comment on will then link to your blog (if they like the content) and help promote it. This link building is one of the most important aspects of increasing SEO and fundamental to good blogging – more links equals more mentions which in turn equals better rankings.

Better search engine rankings can mean the difference between page one of Google and page two – incidentally, studies have shown that 94% of internet searches click a first page result with less than 6% making it to the second page. Something to consider before you pull the plug on your blog!

Final thoughts (in the guise of Jerry Springer)

Blogging is a vital (and mostly free) tool for companies to assert their position on key industry issues, share news stories about their company (in particular growth etc) and generally raise awareness.

Blogs should be over 250 words and less than 1000 words (250 to register as new content with search engines and less than 1000 so readers don’t doze off mid way through).  While the temptation is to use Facebook and Twitter only, by eliminating blogs you lose the use of one of the most influential platforms for generating awareness of your company…effectively cutting off your corporate nose off to spite your face.

Take care of yourself and each other!

Google Drive to Challenge Dropbox and SkyDrive

27 April 2012 - Digital

Google has unveiled its new customer service that offers up to 16TB (yes, terabytes) of virtual storage space for online content such as photographs, music and films.

Labelled Google Drive, the product will challenge the supremacy of established cloud service providers; Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Google Drive initially offers 5GB (gigabytes) of free storage space to users. Customers can then pay for more space on a rising scale.

And although experts have questioned Google’s late arrival in the market, they are still expected to mount a huge challenge to established companies already providing this service.

16TB of storage can hold up to four thousand DVD quality feature length movies.

Live Your Life in the Cloud

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of [Google] Chrome and Apps, released a blog post stating: “Today, we’re introducing Google Drive – a central place where you can create, share, collaborate and keep all of your stuff.

“Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive.”

Users will be able to upload, manage and access photos, videos, documents and all other forms of digital paraphernalia to the virtual cloud.

Google Drive can be installed onto a PC or Apple Mac or downloaded to an Android phone or tablet. Google is working on an iPhone app for the Apple mobile operating system. They anticipate it being ready within weeks.

Users who are visually impaired can access Google Drive with the aid of a screen reader.

Hanns Kohler-Kruner from tech research company Gartner said:”Google Drive will hit some competitors very hard and shake up the market.

“It will also create another stream of more focused and potential ad revenue for Google around the content of personal files on Google Drive.”

Movies that have been uploaded to Google Drive will become available on Google+ boosting the appeal of the fledgling social network.

Fully Searchable Drive

Drawing on its search engine expertise, Google will hope to differentiate the service from others.

The Drive will be fully searchable by keyword and file type, activity or user. The service will also use OCR (optical character recognition) to recognise text in scanned documents.

This will allow users, for example, to search a scanned newspaper clipping for specific words in the newspapers articles.

Image recognition will also be possible in Google Drive.

“If you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip to Drive, the next time you search for Grand Canyon, photos of it will pop up,” said Sundar Pichai in the blog.

A user will get the first 5GB of storage free of charge.

After that customers can upgrade to 25GB for $2.49 (£1.50) a month, 100GB $4.99 a month, 1TB for $49.99 or 16TB for $799.99.

When users upgrade to a paid account, their Gmail account storage will automatically expand to 25GB.

Microsoft offers maximum yearly subscriptions of $50, this will buy 100GB of storage.

Dropbox customers can purchase up to 100GB at a rate of $19.99 per month or $199 per year. They also offer larger amounts of storage to groups of people. The amount of storage and costs are determined by how many users share the space.

Will Facebook Join the Fray?

As people look to access their digital content from a variety of places and devices the cloud service market place is likely to become ever more popular.

Dropbox pioneered the storage cloud concept, but now runs the risk of being undercut by its competitors.

Principal analyst at research company Ovum, Richard Edwards, commented that Google was “very late” to get on board but that its move could encourage others.

“Facebook doesn’t have a cloud service but this may prompt it into an acquisition,” he said.

“If Facebook was to buy Dropbox that would be a game-changer.”

As news of Google’s intentions spread, existing cloud providers overhauled their own systems.

Dropbox began to allow its customers to grant non-members access privileges to their files via email links. Before this both parties would have to be signed up to its service and share common folders.

Microsoft’s SkyDrive has now integrated the virtual drive into Windows Explorer and Apple’s Finder so that it can be used as an extension of the desktop.

Microsoft has also improved the capability to access content stored on the drive from iPads and iPhones as well as Windows Phone-based handsets.